Thursday, April 11, 2013

This week we made visual vocabulary cards for our water cycle vocabulary. The purpose of a visual vocabulary card is to design it in a way which will help teach the meaning of the word. Your children picked either water cycle, evaporation, precipitation, or condensation. They then designed or decorated the word in way to help others understand the concept. Here are some of our examples:

Friday, April 5, 2013

The sun is the source of all our energy. We learned when we discussed our natural resources that each one could be related to the sun somehow. In particular this week, we discussed how the sun plays a role in plant growth, the water cycle, and creating winds. The sun's role in the water cycle is pretty obvious to the kids - it powers evaporation, and without evaporation the whole water cycle shuts down. In regards to plant growth, the sun allows the plants to go through the process of photosynthesis. During photosynthesis, the plant converts light energy into chemical energy, or food. Finally, the sun heats the Earth's surface unevenly, leading to the creation of winds.

I gave the students a list of several words that would connect to each of the three roles of the sun. They were to make a diagram stemming from the sun, and decide where all the words fit best. Here is an example:

About Me

Rebecca May

I'm a wife, mother of two, and 4th grade teacher who is totally in love with her job! I teach math and science to roughly 40 kids a year. I've tried to model my classroom after this quote by Elliot Eisner - "When the joy is in the journey, the journey will be pursued." I feel very fortunate to work in an amazing school district, where it is commonplace to push students to their full potential and settle for nothing less. I truly feel blessed!!